Skin Trade

“The demonic, some evil spirits, as you saw with your Mother Dark.” She frowned.

“You’ve thought of something,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, it’s just, it could be almost anything. You haven’t even told me how they stopped Randy from speaking. I assume it was some kind of gag or damage that made speech impossible.”

Honestly, for her to really be a worthwhile information source, she needed more clues, but Edward had expressly told me not to give her any. Crap.

“I know you don’t trust me, Marshal.”

“Why should I? You’ve got this house so wired with magic that you’ve taken most of our natural cynicism away. We’ve talked more openly around you than we should have already.”

“Cynicism is not always conducive to studying and performing magic.”

“But for cops, it’s essential.”

“I did not ward my house with the idea that police would come and question me.”

“Fair enough, but how can we tell what was on purpose and what wasn’t? I can’t even tell if we were talking too much before you redid the wards, or only after. If it was after, you did it on purpose to try to get us to tell you more about Randy Sherman’s death.”

“That would be a very gray thing for a Wiccan priestess to do, Marshal.”

I smiled, and it was a real smile. “You did, didn’t you? You used the emergency to tweak the spells so we’d be more chatty.” I shook a finger at her. “That’s illegal. Using magic on police in the middle of an investigation is automatic arrest. I could charge you with magical malfeasance.”

“That would be an automatic jail sentence of at least six months,” she said.

“It would,” I said.

We stared at each other. “Grief makes me foolish, and I apologize for that, but I want to know what happened to Randy.”

“No,” I said, “you don’t.”

She frowned, and then her face clouded over. “Is it that awful?”

“You don’t want your last”-I hesitated-“image of your friend to be the crime scene photos, and definitely not a visit to the morgue.” I reached out to lay a comforting hand, but stopped myself. I was a little fuzzy on human psychic abilities. Did they grow with touch, like a vampire’s? Mine didn’t, but mine were pretty specialized. I let my hand fall back. “Trust me on this one, Phoebe.”

“How can I trust you when you’re threatening to put me in jail?” There was a thread of anger in her voice now. I guess I couldn’t blame her.

I actually hadn’t said I’d put her in jail. I’d just mentioned that I could put her in jail. Big difference, actually, but if she assumed it was a threat, fine. If it got me more information on the killings, or Randy Sherman, or anything, then even better. I wasn’t here to win popularity contests; I was here to solve crimes.

There was movement in the doorway from farther inside the house. My gun was suddenly in my hand. Thought and action are one, grasshopper.

“It’s my daughter,” Phoebe said, but she was staring at the gun. Staring at it like it was a very bad thing. I wasn’t even pointing it at anyone, and already she was scared. From powerful priestess hooked up to deity and magic to frightened civilian in one move.

“Can I talk to you, or do you just want to shoot me?” Kate’s voice held fury. A nice red wave of anger, tinged with fear, came off her. It made my stomach clench tight, as if I were still hungry, but I knew it wasn’t that kind of hunger.

I stepped back from both the mother and the daughter. I put myself so that my empty hand would open the door, and I could get away from that tempting anger, if the hunger rose too fast and too hard to control. I had Wicked outside, and if I had to choose between the ardeur with him or psychic rape on a witch, then I’d choose sex and the vampire. At least he was willing.

“Are you afraid of me?” Kate asked, as she stepped carefully into the room. She’d added a short jacket over her jeans, and she had her hands stuffed in her pockets.

“Let me see your hands,” I said, voice low and even.

She made a face, but her mother said, “Do what she says, Kate.”

The girl couldn’t have been much younger than me, five years or less, but she’d lived a different life. She didn’t believe I’d shoot her, but her mother did.

“Kate, as your priestess, I tell you to do what she says.”

The girl let out a breath, then took her hands, carefully, out of her pockets. The hands were empty. Her anger welled off her like some rich, thick scent, as if her rage would taste better than most.

“I won’t let her put you in jail,” she said, dark eyes all for her mother, as if I weren’t standing there with a gun in my hand. I hoped I didn’t have to shoot her; it would be like winging an angry Bambi. She just didn’t know any better. The very naïveté of her helped me regain control of the hunger. I took deep, even breaths and thought soothing, empty thoughts.

“Kate,” Phoebe said, “I let my grief get in the way of my better judgment. That is not the marshal’s fault.”

Kate shook her head hard enough for her brown ponytail to whirl around her shoulders. “No.” Then she turned those angry eyes to me. “If I gave you a name of someone who could have done this, would you leave my mother alone?”

“Kate, no!”

“We don’t owe him enough for you to go to jail, and what if he did have something to do with this? Then the next time he killed someone, it would be part of our karma, too. I don’t owe him that.”

“I was his priestess, Kate.”

She shook her head again. “I wasn’t.” She turned back to me. “I’m dating a cop. He said something about the bodies being torn up, and not all of it was wereanimal. I mean, that always makes the news anytime you get a mutilated body. They always blame the local wereanimals first.”

I just nodded. She was in a mood to talk, if I didn’t spoil it somehow.

“But he said that some of the bodies were cut with blades. That the ME had never seen anything like it, and neither had you guys.”

Her boyfriend was way too talkative, but if she’d give me the name, I wouldn’t tell. I might try to find out who it was and tell him to keep his mouth shut, but I wouldn’t rat him out. If she’d just say the name.

“Is that true?” she asked, at last.

“I’m not free to discuss an ongoing investigation. You know that.”

“If it’s true, then you need to talk to Todd Bering.”

“He’s off his meds again,” Phoebe said. “You have to understand that. He’s a good man when he takes his meds, but when he goes off…”

“What’s he on meds for?”

“He was diagnosed with schizophrenia because he heard voices and saw things. He may have been mildly ill, but he is also one of the most powerful natural witches I’ve ever met.”

“What does that mean, ‘natural witch’?” I asked.

“Like you,” Kate said, “your power just came, right? You didn’t have to study, you could just do it.”

“I had to have training to control it,” I said.

“And that’s what we tried to do for Todd.” Kate didn’t sound angry now, she sounded a little sad. I was happy about the sad; it made the receding edge of anger less yummy.

“It didn’t work?” I asked.

“It worked,” Phoebe said, and she sighed, “but when he started getting sick again, he called up things that are never to be touched on our path. There are some things you ca

I nodded. “So I’ve heard.”

“He called a demon. It felt so awful, like you couldn’t breathe past the evil of it,” Kate said; she was looking at the ground, but her eyes were haunted, as if she could still feel it.

“I’ve felt the demonic before,” I said.

“Then you know,” she said, raising those haunted eyes to me.

I nodded. “I know.”

“It had these big blade-like hooks for hands. As far as I know it’s still inside the circle in his house, but if he gained control of it…” She shrugged.

I looked at them both. “The most likely scenario is that when it gets out of the circle, it just kills him and goes back to where it came from. How likely is it that this Todd Bering is powerful and sane enough to control something like this?”